The Start Through the End
by ale-la-pazza1
Summary: Cofic with Christina09. DH-At Dobby's funeral. While Harry burries a friend, he realizes what Hermione means to him... indeed, what a great place to be with friends...


This a collaboration fic I've made with Christina09, I really hope you appreciate our work.

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The strong smell of the sea almost intoxicated him. His hands burning as he kept opening the hole in the ground. His eyes burning as the tears fell from his already sweaty face, his scar hurting and his legs ready to give way as he tried to focus on the task at hand. He was burying a friend, a savor, another victim of the war with his name on…. He refused to break to sobs, he refused to stop opening the grave, he refused to betray Dobby even in that, a proper funeral.

From the distance he spots his best friends, Hermione is bringing their little friend to his resting place and Ron is quietly following her. He wonders why she's the one carrying Dobby, after all she has been through she shouldn't have this burden too. The mere sight of her is like a stab through his chest, she looks so fragile, so precious, like a porcelain doll. She's hurt and it's all his fault, as usual. She has been tortured by Voldemort's most loyal Death Eather just because she's with his friend and she stoically resisted. She has not betrayed him, she never had nor she will ever do.

For a moment he wonders, how things change so rapidly, from the moment they were dancing on their own, forgetting everything and everyone, to Godric's Hollow, where he "met" his parents for the first time by her side, to Nagini's attack and then the forest of Dean. To the small talk they had outside the tent… the silver doe and the destruction of the locket… the display of Ron's worst fear, and the kiss. With a small gulp and a sob he realizes the only personal, carefree and somewhat happy memories he has of the past months included only him and Hermione, others made carefree for her, others made somewhat happy because of her and others personal with her. But now, he's here, he forces himself to accept, and it doesn't matter what happened, before death, nothing matters and Hermione saw Death in the eye that day, for him… the guilt squeezed his heart.

She kneels beside the grave he had dug with his bare hands, he helps her lay Dobby to rest once and for all; neither of them speak, because no word would have made a difference. He observes how Ron holds Hermione and he finds himself envying his best friend, he gets to hold her, to take comfort by her proximity, to have her back; instead Harry is just more lonely. He tries not to wish that Ron never had come back, it's just too selfish of him to wish that and he is anything but selfish. Would he want Hermione suffer because Ron had never come back? No, he wouldn't, but a little voice inside his head whispers him that she didn't seem that sad when she was dancing in his arms, she didn't seem to miss Ron when she stared at his lips unsure whatever kiss him or not. No, she definitely wasn't sad then.

She hadn't looked sad, she had looked content, calmed and hesitant. Why hesitant? Why they didn't take that step? Why they didn't close the distance and try? Would it be so bad? Would it be so sinful and wrong? Or would it be what they both needed to change everything, to make things more complicated yet right and true. They were Gryffindors, they were supposed to be brave and daring, yet they had chosen to step back, to choose between easy over what is right and that was something he greatly regretted as now he was left alone, looking at Ron holding the one he didn't deserve.

Their eyes locked for a moment and he wonders if his thoughts are hers as well; there's something different in the way she lets Ron hold her, there's a distance that there wasn't before, there's this forcing that was never before. Something has changed between them and it would be only foolish trying to deny it. Ron walked away and allowed them to get closer. When there's only one person you could trust in the whole world, wouldn't you hold on to her as tight as you can? And that's exactly what Harry did, he held on her, on her spells, on her comfort, on her rare smiles, on her touches, on her loyalty. He has let her become the compass of his world, the center of his universe, his better half, his only half.

Ginny, the thought feels like an invasion inside his mind, inside his feelings and thoughts. He had broken up with her for exactly these reasons, he didn't know if and how he would return, he knew he would change and in a way, he's not surprised now. She was the person that symbolized his Hogwarts years, his carefree time while under Dumbledore's protection, but that's the past, she was done when that time was done. There are no Hogwarts years now and no Dumbledore, this is the real world and in the real world, only Hermione is his rock, his backbone, the one who knows how to help and share things, the one who doesn't back off when he screams under the power of a Horcrux, the one who has faith in him even when he doesn't…

…and it seems crazy that he can't regard her as anything more than a friend. It's only of the unwritten rules between the trio, he doesn't know how or when Ron claimed Hermione but he did. But isn't breaking the rules all he has ever done? Why should it be different this time? Wasn't he always the one to follow his heart rather than his brain? A wave of guilty washes over him, but it's not because of Ron or Ginny but because he has just buried a dear friend and he can't stop thinking about his best friend.

And as if she can read his mind, which in a way, she does, she approaches, a bit stumbling as the exhaustion must be catching up with her, he knows the aftershocks of the Cruciatus. She approaches him while Ron stays back, watching, like in the past, and she takes his full of dirt hand in her shaky one. And as she does, he looks down and notices the scar Bellatrix carved upon her skin and the guilt chokes him. He looks up at her eyes and she knows he has noticed the insult that will stay there forever, yet she stands there, holding his hand and the only thing he can do to comfort her and take some of the comfort he deserves is to pull her in his arms, to hug her tightly, like he had as to save her from the transformed shape of Lupin, in the department of mysteries, and like he had in the tent, when he danced with her…

…like whenever she saw him after a long time of distance, she snuggles closer to him, putting her head in the crock of his neck. Even in this moment he can't stop his mind from the registering the perfect way their bodies fit, like they were two pieces of the same puzzle. He closes his eyes, letting her warm body give him the much needed comfort, he wants to say something, anything that will make her understand he knows how things must been from now on but she beats him on time. She whispers in his ear "I know. Me too" and he is not sure if she's saying that she loves him, or that she's sorry about things must be, or that she hopes things will change.

It's probably a combination of all and it's the signal he needed to know that he shouldn't give up on the hope that things will find a way to work out for them.


End file.
